Turning on a dime

Well, that was different.

I picked up a sidebar assignment from the Orange County Register after it first appeared that my Friday night football gig was done for the season as the number of games dwindled in the second week of playoffs.

Unlike going to the game site and knowing that my stat reporting would be the most important element, followed by knocking out an 8- to 10-inch story, this was going to be a pure feature, although based on something out of the game, and it had to center on the Orange County school, Mater Dei, which was hosting Alemany.

The game ended up being quite exciting, although I often think that what is exciting for fans makes for a tougher job for reporters: Games with lots of points and games that go down to the wire end up taking more time, then are more complicated to report on.

For me, the initial issue was to figure out what I'd be writing about. Register staffer Adam Maya was there to write the gamer and take care of the stats, which seem to be more time consuming than the actual story. But this was also a 7:30 p.m. start, and on television (with all its commercial timeouts), so making the 10:30 p.m. deadline would be no easy task for either of us.

As it turned out, the teams kept piling up the points and our deadline was pushed back, which is good since the game did not even end until 10:25 and we still had interviews to do. By that time Adam and I had decided I would write on the challenge to Mater Dei junior quarterback Chase Forrest, even if I had to start writing that story with 8 minutes left and I had to lead with it looking like a loss for the Monarchs.

Twenty-two points  in 7 1/2 minutes certainly changes things. But also makes them more complicated.

Having to scramble for an idea and then see it through on a tight deadline reminded me of my early days as a reporter. More often then not you'd go to a town council meeting with an idea of what you'd write about, and maybe something happens in the chamber that changes that, but it was within the context of that meeting so the choices of story still had some limit. Other days you'd walk in the door and find out you were writing a story about where cars are supposed to be in those crossovers while waiting to make a U-turn.

Thankfully, this came together better than I thought it might when I was staring at the computer at 10:50 trying to sew the thing together. And it was quite a game to watch.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/forrest-34619-dei-mater.html

Oh, and I appeared on TV (yet again) too.

So long to an old friend

In New Orleans, there is no longer a daily paper. Soon, Syracuse and Harrisburg will also face that reality. But in all three cases, the framework of the daily is still there, reporters will still post stories to the web those days that the newspaper is not printed, and longtime readers can take comfort in knowing their source of information is still available, although in a different format.

That’s one thing readers of The News & Messenger don’t have in Prince William County. When the Manassas-based paper closes shop in seven weeks, the InsideNOVA website will go with it, and residents of Virginia’s second-largest county will lose their most reliable source of news.

I’m particularly interested in The News & Messenger’s fate for several reasons. I was a stringer for the two papers that were merged to create it, the Journal-Messenger of Manassas and the Potomac News of Woodbridge. I actually applied for the assistant sports editor slot at the Potomac News twice in the 1990s. And the J-M was a worthy adversary when I first got to The Northern Virginia Daily in 2000, proving to be the last paper to beat us in the Virginia Press Association sweepstakes, although that win essentially took place before Bob Wooten arrived at the Daily at the end of 1999.

Some six years before that, I got a call from the Potomac News asking if I would write a story from a Brentsville-Page County football game I was already covering in Shenandoah that Friday. Sure, I said. Around that time the News had launched a Sunday edition (and put its Saturday paper on hiatus), so doing a story and stats for them still involved filing Friday night, but not on the deadlines I would face with the J-M in 1995-96 or Orange County Register.

While the story was well-received, the Potomac News did not have anything else for me, so when J-M sports editor Josh Barr got in touch with me the next fall, I started covering Manassas Park and Brentsville when they would play at Page or Luray. In two years, I probably wrote seven or eight stories, covering football, basketball and even the Region B volleyball tournament. Those $25 checks came in handy at the time.

As I moved on to the Daily News-Record and The Northern Virginia Daily, I always kept an eye on what they were doing in Manassas and Woodbridge. I have always been a proponent of newspapers being local, doing what they can do the best. Sure, The Washington Post and Washington television stations cover Prince William County, if you consider showing up whenever something explodes as coverage. There was plenty of stuff that you’d never hear about if not for the truly local paper: City councils, boards of supervisors, education coverage. All of the “unsexy” stuff that does not translate to television but affects people’s lives every day.

When were the television stations and the Post interested in the Shenandoah Valley? When a hurricane was on the way, when a mobile home blew up and when the Salahis instigated some sort of hijinks. Similarly, they concentrate their efforts on Fairfax and kind of let Prince William twist in the wind. So the Potomac News and the J-M had their niche.

Until they were merged. Until Media General decided to close down the presses in 2009 and start printing the paper 75 miles away in Hanover County, squeezing in the run between editions of the Times-Dispatch. Factor in the time it would take to get the papers back to Prince William County and the deadlines created their own issues. I am not sure what time the News & Messenger goes to press these days, but when the change was made in 2009 it was too early to get much (if any) live prep coverage in the paper. And just like those local governmental stories, something local newspapers do better than anyone else is high school sports. That is, until your ability to do so is compromised.

Oh sure, that coverage can be found on the website so if it doesn’t make the paper, just look there. Except for the people who don’t want to look there, who have found it in their newspaper all these years and do not understand why that is being taken away from them.

I was shocked to see that The Journal & Messenger’s circulation had fallen to 10,000 (from 22,132 as separate papers in 2005) until I starting thinking of what it had become. I hear it has about 26,000 likes on Facebook and the InsideNOVA website is quite popular. But the center of the operation was marginalized, and the prospects of making it profitable again were slim.

Interestingly, however, the plug is being pulled on the website too, probably because without print income it is impossible to keep it operating. That leaves readers in Prince William County several weeklies and websites such as Patch to keep them informed.

Because of the special circumstances – proximity to Washington, printing on early deadlines, and the recent purchase along with most of Media General’s other papers among them – the loss of the News & Messenger is not a canary in a mineshaft. But it is disappointing to me, both in seeing good journalists lose their jobs and readers lose a reliable source of information.

Playoff time

Covered my first CIF playoff game on a windy Friday night in Costa Mesa. It might have been 58 degrees but with the 25 to 35 mph winds I really felt like I was back in the Shenandoah Valley. The weather held down the crowd, but it was a great opportunity to see two of the top running backs in Orange County. Here's my story.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/yard-34476-estancia-magana.html

Something to play for, and a bath to boot

I did not know enough about California's high school playoff system last week at this time to know my Friday game actually meant something.

The Golden West League game pitted a 4-5 Ocean View team against 2-7 Loara, who I had just seen the week before losing to Westminster as the Lions sewed up a piece of the district title and their own berth in the playoffs.

So imagine my surprise when I was reading an e-mail from Orange County Register team leader Brian Patterson early Friday afternoon. Just like the previous week, he was outlining the playoff scenarios for the two dozen stringers working that night, since we needed to get that information in our stories. Despite their records, the teams in my game were still in line for the playoffs. All Ocean View needed was a win to finish 3-2 in the league and get its third playoff slot. If Loara won, it would be part of a three-way tie at 2-3 and coin flips would determine if it, Ocean View or Orange got the spot.

When I arrived at Glover Field in Anaheim, I asked about the coin flips, and someone from each school told me off the record that they had taken place and that Loara won, so this very game would determine the third-place team.

Lucky for me, it was an exciting game that moved at a great pace, wrapping up with Loara's win at about 9:20, giving me a little more than an hour to file my statistics and story. I was even able to get a quick interview with Loara's coach, Dean Lappin. I had just finished jotting down his last quote when I sensed players coming up from behind us.

My interview allowed them enough time to grab a cooler and dump it on their coach. One of my legs got wet as well, but I was none the worse for wear. I saw Lappin in the middle of a group of players, said thanks and gave him a thumbs up. Just another Friday night on the beat.

Here's the coverage from OCVarsity.com. Not sure if there are any photos floating around, but if I find one I will post it.

http://www.ocvarsity.com/sports/stirrat-34301-loara-spot.html